Stone Monsters
by Silenced Cry
Summary: Tommy watches the city fall and learns that the monsters don't wait til dark to show up anymore. [Tommy, Joel; a moment between brothers] [one-shot]


**A/N: **Hello all! I wrote this a while ago just to see if I could match the dark tone of this wonderful game. Let me know if I hit the mark! For now, this will be a one-shot, but if I have the time and drive, I may write some more one-shots to turn this into a collection. Constructive criticism is welcome

**Summary:** Tommy watches the city fall and learns that the monsters don't wait til dark to show up anymore. [Tommy, Joel one-shot]

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**Stone Monsters**

It took them some time to settle into the different kinds of pains that came with surviving. At first, it was the _decay_ he couldn't stand –the new kind of slick grime of immorality that coated the quarantine zone; the selfish filth of too many people either scared senseless or into a criminal derangement. And all of the forced encounters with these same people in the streets….waiting for ration cards to be honoured, waiting for medical supplies that never came; all that waiting gave you too much time to be witness to this new kind of ugliness. Blood spills so easily now.

Knees to the ground, hands ontop of your head, those terrifying moments of irrational doubt and discovery, then, 'Clear' –another day is done, and thank god, thank _something_, you're not infected.

He's bone-weary from this routine, and he can feel it like pulses of blood and rattling breaths –all of the _good_ slowly leaving him. He doesn't want to reach the bottom of the pit, the bottom of his very being, and find nothing there but fire and fight and all of the hellish things that keep you surviving but not _living._

"Whatcha doin', star gazing? Get away from that window. Curfew ain't over yet, little brother."

Tommy turns his back to the searchlights crawling over a broken city and its broken people. Joel's got his head in his hands, like it's self-consolation for all the worries he's got. "Last thing I need is a bullet through your skull", he mutters, still looking down into his lap.

"Yes boss." Hands in pockets, the deepest of sighs, trying not to let his aggravation peek through. Joel rakes his fingers through his hair roughly, deciding to ignore the smart remark.

They're starting to hate each other, like all brothers do. But it's taking a darker tone. It's the brand of hatred that comes from close quarters in a war zone, siblings turned to father-son because of Joel's grudging responsibility, not knowing how to exist in this new world except as the soldier-martyr. Nothing to do but surge ahead.

"We're going to the old district tomorrow. Some dealers are bringing in food and supplies, but we've gotta act fast."

Tommy turns the words over in his head, and fiddles with a thought. "We only have three ration cards left", he says.

Joel rubs his shoulder, tracing over a days-old deep tissue bruise sustained through his brother's hesitation. He doesn't squirm out of his discomfort because these next words are getting easier to say: "Three ration cards and a gun. We'll make it work."

Tommy reaches into his coat pocket and feels the weight of the gun. And in that same movement, he feels the rubbery softness of a small roadside flower he had found days earlier –an old habit of his, collecting things for Sarah, waiting for a moment to share them with her like they would at beaches and parks, and then, remembering with a gut-wrenching pain, that he can't. Sometimes it will be a feather or a smooth pebble, something _found_ and _simple_, that comes with the memory of her voice and the persistent thought that he's _still _Uncle Tommy. So he'll keep it for a few days, never for too long, just as a temporary memorial for his niece, and then toss them out. It's the exact motion of his renewed, and then, lost, hope. Over and over again, like a phoenix.

"This time", Joel says, clenching a hand over his injury, "you'd better shoot when I say."

Their eyes meet, and when Tommy looks at his brother it's like a trick of the light. Joel is deconstructed; he is the shadow that belongs to the moving, breathing body.

"I got it, Joel. I got it."

Tommy is worried: he sees the grit, the red eyes, the hollowed-out heart and the locked-in nightmare, making his brother vicious with his fists and perfectly steady with a gun. His pallor is graying to synchronize with the fallen city, and when the shortage began, the wounds were suffered through so that the parched throat and numbed mind could be satisfied with drink.

He's got to find solutions. And fast. If they can just make it outside the grid, outside the network of Joel's hurt anger, and attach themselves to some new goal…

It becomes a frenzied thought in his mind, one he can't put down.


End file.
